Queen of Liars
by Saf Dawnheart
Summary: Or, how a simple card game can change one's opinion of someone. — Palkia/Giratina.


Okay, I have no excuses for this fic. Seriously. XD I was just working on a multifandom collection of song-based oneshots (which will probably not all get posted, btw), and then I thought of how funny it would be if the legendaries played BS. And so this odd little thing was born.

I'll just warn you right now, this fic contains failed attempts at a bit of humor. Oh, and a crack pairing. Let's not forget that.

B-but it does include Zekrom and Reshiram, in perhaps one of the very first legendshipper portrayals of them! So... um, yay?

Enjoy!

EDIT: Due to the fact that it was mildly pointless to the story (except that it shows how much Palkia wants respect, which I think is shown later on anyway), the flashback has been removed.

**_Disclaimer- _**I do not own Pokemon. That honor goes to Satoshi Tajiri. Oh, and I also don't own the card game BS. If I did, maybe I wouldn't fail so much at it. D8

* * *

Things would be so much easier if Palkia could summon up the mental energy to hate her.

Really, they would.

As it is, though, all he can do is helplessly, carefully slide his card toward the rather prolific pile at the center of the makeshift table (with shaky, clammy claws, no less; the fact that this game has become such serious business in the last few minutes fills him with both annoyance and self-deprecation) and stutter out, "One four."

And of course she doesn't waste a beat rattling off the two letters that control this game. The two letters that seem oh-so-innocuous when mentioned out of context of their counterpart, but together, send a thrill of humiliation so powerful down his spine he thinks he might actually start to sweat with the force of it.

"BS," Giratina declares.

Palkia's groan serves as enough of a confirmation, and her smirk only widens as he leans forward and pulls the pile of cards toward him.

On his other side, the quirk of Zekrom's lips thoroughly resembles that of the Cheshire Cat at his space-controlling friend's continuing misfortune. The dark-skinned, almost mechanical dragon elbows Palkia in the ribs, speaking the obvious in a way that almost mirrors Palkia's own tendencies. "Man, you really suck at this game," Zekrom guffaws.

"Sh-shut up," is Palkia's knee-jerk response.

He hears Reshiram – Zekrom's slender, snow-colored counterpart – snicker under her breath and slides down in his seat, laying his now-massive collection of cards down on the table so he can properly fold his arms. His embarrassment heightens when Giratina's head swivels toward him and she narrows one eye, clearly amused, at the sight of his sulking.

"It's not _my_ fault you decided to have us play a stupid card game after the meeting today," he continues. "Like I knew it was gonna be BS."

Zekrom looks away shiftily. "And Dialga couldn't play today, so Giratina decided to step forward and take her place?"

"Something like that," Palkia grumbles, slinking down in his chair. The whole situation still bemuses him to no end – why Giratina had volunteered to play this game instead of snorting and passing them by is a mystery he'll never resolve.

He watches, still pouting a little, as Zekrom announces, "Two fives," and drops two face-down cards on the makeshift table. Silence reigns; Palkia hesitates, considers calling Zekrom's bluff, but then thinks better of it.

However, observing Giratina's carefully neutral countenance, he does take solace in the fact that not even she had deciphered Zekrom's poker face.

Now it's Giratina's turn. This time around, Palkia keeps the memory of the back-heating humiliation she has so kindly bestowed upon him firmly in his mind and watches her face warily. For a few moments, that golden-clad mien is half-covered by the two cards she holds up to her eyes with one wing (and he swears he sees her gaze flick up to him for just an instant).

But then that wing lowers just so, and hesitation steals briefly across her eyes.

_Yes!_ Palkia thinks, fighting back a grin.

"Two sixes," she says, laying her remaining cards down on the corners where the tops of the pedestals meet.

"Ha!" Palkia barks, leaping to his feet and pointing at the stack. "BS." He allows the grin he's been fighting back to appear on his countenance, sits back with a satisfied chortle.

Zekrom lets out a "ho-_ho!"_ of amusement, looking from one dragon to the other. Reshiram simply waits to see how this plays out.

And then, to Palkia's complete and utter shock, Giratina's eyes narrow not out of irritation at his predicting her lie, but in smug triumph.

"No," she says, "I was actually being honest." She extends one wing forward and flips the two cards over, and there lies the truth in all its glory: two sixes, just as she said.

Palkia can only stare at her, so filled with self-hatred and vexation toward _her_ and fury that he just wants to – just wants to –

_Dammit!_

He hisses out a curse under his breath and slams his hand down onto the edge of the pedestal he's using, dragging the pile of cards toward him in a way that makes the tips of his claws scrape across the surface. That will probably leave a mark, but strangely, the force of those smug wine-colored eyes on him blunts the edge of fear he feels at how Arceus will likely punish him for it. His own, dark crimson gaze glowers ferociously into hers even as he shuffles the now-large pile of cards together in his hands, but she fails to rise to the bait.

"Well," Giratina purrs, "would you look at that." She glances mockingly from one empty-handed wing to the other before shrugging her shoulders. "Looks like I win again."

"Man, Giratina," Zekrom sighs, laying his cards down, "you are _way_ too good at this game. Reshiram and I just can't compete, I guess."

"You got a little close to winning last round," Reshiram points out mildly.

The sound of the fire dragon trying to soothe her counterpart's injured pride – and said counterpart's jokingly self-deprecating responses – fades to a buzz in Palkia's ears. All he can focus on are Giratina's eyes, and how those pupils move from Zekrom to Reshiram (he thinks he sees an odd emotion there, something that almost kind of resembles like _loneliness_, but his anger toward her blinds him and he cannot be sure) before settling back on him.

Suddenly an impulse takes him, and, with a snarl, he scatters his cards across the table. "I give up," he spits out, whirling on his heel and stomping toward the doors. He thinks he hears Zekrom calling after him to take a chill pill and Reshiram's softer voice pleading for him to calm down, but then the oaken double doors are sliding shut behind him and silence muffles them.

Panting with the force of his fury, Palkia strides down the long hallway leading up to the meeting room. With the part of his mind that isn't totally infused with desperate ire, he feels a bit guilty at leaving them to clean up the mess he has just made; yet in the same vein of how his prior realization made him feel, he doesn't quite give a damn at the moment.

Something occurs to him. That mental energy he would have had to summon up to hate her?

Yeah. It's summoned up.

"Well, that was a fine little tantrum you just threw."

Palkia stops in his tracks. Mentally, he builds up a steady stream of curses at the fact that she decided to follow him (a case of the winner taunting the loser, it seems), but, thank Arceus, he manages to remain relatively silent.

The only thing he allows to escape him is a brusque, "Why the hell are you here?"

At the sound of a loud, huffed-out sigh, he turns on his heel, breaks his unspoken vow not to rise to her jibes. "What?" he hisses.

Giratina rolls her eyes scornfully. "Arceus, you're such a baby. Screaming like a wounded Tepig when you lose."

"Oh, whatever," Palkia shoots back, despite the very small, very traitorous part of him that agrees with her. "It's not my fault you won every single round and it frustrated me a little bit."

"'A little bit' being the understatement of the century, obviously." Stung, Palkia opens his mouth to interject, but her next action effectively shuts him up but for a tiny murmur of confusion.

After all, in light of how she basically just called him a whiny little kid, he hardly expected her to move closer.

"It's not _my_ fault you're such an awful liar," she retorts. "The way you throw your emotions out in the open for everyone to see? I could see every time you lied about what cards you were dealing a mile off. It only takes a split second of reading your face to know as much."

_And I suppose that makes you the queen of liars, then?_ Palkia almost says, but something inside him holds him back. The part that agreed with her assessment of him, maybe.

And he knows the idiocy of his next thoughts, knows he shouldn't have the right to analyze someone he barely knows on the merits of how she performed in a stupid card game – but he can't help but think about her continuous winning streak. Up until now, he has always dismissed her as nothing but a stubborn, angry, bitter legendary, whose job (the very thing that can make or break a deity such as them, he knows) has shoved her into a state of emotional retardation from which no escape exists –

Yet in only half an hour or so, she had tossed those expectations of her aside and proved herself a rather valuable opponent in mental battle. Palkia knows he isn't exactly the master of non-physical combat – Dialga loves reminding him of that, so he cannot delude himself to that degree – but he knows a clever creature, Pokemon and legendary alike, when he sees it.

_Maybe she _is_ the queen of liars,_ he thinks, and feels a rush of mild revulsion at his next revelation. _And it's… kind of impressive._

"Why did you ask to play with us today?" he hears himself ask.

Clearly, Giratina had not expected this kind of response from him. Another failed attempt at a rebuttal, maybe, or a further demonstration of just how long he could hold his face in a pout – but certainly not a question.

He would almost smile at how he's caught her off-guard, if he weren't too busy feeling acerbity toward himself.

She blinks a couple of times, thinking seriously on his inquiry. Oddly, Palkia finds himself taking her previous words – about reading the difference between an impending lie or truth on his face – to heart and appraising her just as closely as she had probably watched him. It's mildly creepy, at first, but he gets over that rather quickly. Now that her expression is devoid of its old façade of contempt and bitterness, he can't help but notice how almost-maybe-pretty she is, half-concealed by her mask as her countenance is.

(And he is going to stop that train of thought before it starts. Right _now._)

Then she mutters something under her breath and turns away, and Palkia leans to the side, trying to get that eye contact back and nearly falling over in the process. "Huh?" he asks intelligently.

"I _said,"_ Giratina hisses as she swings her head back in his direction – and if he thought she looked pissed at him before it pales in comparison to now; he damn near squeaks and recoils at the livid expression that stiffens her spine and makes her glare embody the "if looks could kill" maxim.

(He swears she trembles a bit before she pushes it aside, as though trying to get it out as fast as possible.)

"I asked to play cards with you," she gets out, "because I knew you'd inevitably suck at it, and…"

"And what?" Palkia challenges, his heart already beginning to pound at the obvious inflection behind whatever she's keeping back. If this doesn't spawn mountains of blackmail, he thinks, nothing will –

But her next words effectively unravel any thread of possible retribution schemes in his mind and wipe it clear of everything but shock.

"And you look so damn cute when you're pissed off," Giratina finishes, rather lamely.

Palkia can only stare at her, any amusement he might have felt at her hesitation to reveal her emotions having effectively vanished. All he can think is _wait, did she just call me…?_

Again, he searches Giratina's masked face, this time for a trace of beguilement. A thoroughly uncomfortable aura hangs about her, permeating the air like a particularly heavy fog; it has a contagion about it, and Palkia finds himself shifting back and forth on his haunches as her embarrassment carries over to him.

He waits – nearly opens his mouth and says "BS" before he remembers they have finished with the card game (that already feels like it happened a million years ago) and his common sense puts him back in his place. All he can do – all he can _focus on_ – is the nervousness (nervousness? If Palkia hadn't had a headache before he definitely does now) that darkens her wine-colored eyes and makes their telltale shade lean more toward violet.

For the first time he realizes the light of the torches along the walls, along with the dying sunlight that leaks in through the windows, is catching off her golden mask. And this draws his attention to the very noticeable red tinge beneath that mask.

(It's completely _not_ because he is noticing how the light illuminates her face.

Seriously.)

As though suddenly realizing her feelings are showing on her face, Giratina huffs, turns on her heel, withdraws her legs into her body to become her origin form, and makes a beeline toward the hall exit.

The space dragon looks after her retreating silhouette, his gaze clinging to that shape for mental support until the doors closing swallow it up. For some reason, he feels like if he lets himself dwell on anything other than her, his mind might just crumple under the incongruence of _Giratina_ and _thinking I'm… I'm… like that_ in the same sentence.

Let alone the same dictionary.

And yet beneath that ineffable shock lies… something else. Palkia somehow dredges up the mental strength to dig deeper and find the source of that emotion (because even though he would normally hate having to think this hard about something, the weirdness of the whole thing just _will not_ go away), and abruptly realizes its identity.

Pleasure.

Unconsciously, his lips draw back in a grin.

Because hell – he has to be making _some_ impact, if even Giratina thinks that kind of thing about him.

(It's completely _not_ because he likes that she thinks that about him.

Seriously.)

("BS," he can almost hear her say with a smirk, and realizes that she's right.)

This is the way Reshiram and Zekrom find him a few minutes later: standing in the middle of the hall of legends and smiling like an idiot.

* * *

...I just realized that if you don't know the songs that my fics are based off of, the fic titles seem random. Go me. XD

Reviews encourage me to write more!


End file.
